UNRAVEL THE CATALYST
Author's Note: Hello once again to all of you! Here's my take on Hunter's back story. I do hope you guys enjoy reading my take on why he became the Hunter we met on Glee. This is within the 'Happy Accident' 'verse.
Warnings: Loads of angst, mentions and description of the sexual act, a kid witnessing a sexual act (not intentional), the F word thrown here and there, possible triggers, alcoholism, infidelity, and mentions of mental disorders.
Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, Ryan Murphy does. If I did, I'd make Kurt and Sebastian fall in love with each other and do very dirty things to each other every episode. I'm not making any money off of this either. If you sue me, you'll be sorely disappointed since I'm broke. :D
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When Dana Clarington found out she was pregnant with Hunter, she was ecstatic. Though she and her husband were just entering their late twenties, the couple had been trying to have a baby for the past three years that they had been married. So when Dana found out that she was eight weeks in, she rushed to her husband's office from the hospital and had the surprise of her life when she saw Bradley Clarington's assistant riding her husband on the couch in the room. She had always wondered why her husband insisted on having his office designed that way, but now she knew. Dana left her husband's office feeling so humiliated and shocked that she almost got run over by a bus if Bradley hadn't pulled her off the street in time.
Bradley did make an effort to not fuck his assistant ever again when Dana finally told him she was pregnant (that was after he got slapped and punched when the initial shock of her finding out about his indiscretions wore off). He requested one of the other senior partners in his engineering firm to move the 'offending' assistant to their Seattle branch and got himself a new one – a male this time – to lessen the temptation of fucking around. He loved his wife, though admittedly he didn't love her enough to not screw around, but when he found out that they were going to have a baby, he thought this might be his ticket to rebuild his family. He grasped onto the idea and clung to it like his like depended on it.
When Hunter was born, his parents doted on him. Bradley and Dana's world revolved solely around their son. He was their everything and showered him with so much love that, eventually, nothing was left to share between the couple. Hunter became the Clarington's' sun and moon, and for a time, Hunter succeeded in keeping his parents together, though he was completely unaware of this fact since he was still a baby that time.
On Hunter's sixth birthday, he got bored of his own party and went back into the house to go play with his toys. He climbed up the stairs as fast as his short, chubby legs would allow and heard a weird noise coming from the guest room on the second floor. He shuffled towards the room and saw that the door was ajar. Hunter knew he shouldn't because his father always told him that little boys who snooped were naughty boys, and Hunter was not a naughty boy, but he was a naturally curious little fellow so he shuffled closer and closer and peeked through the space between the door and the frame. There he saw his father and his nanny, Andrea, rocking together in a syncopated rhythm that got the young boy hypnotized. His father and his nanny were on the bed, but they were not lying on it. They were kneeling near the middle of it and Andrea's arms were braced against the headboard, as if to serve as a counter-measure to the way Bradley was pushing against her. Hunter found it weird that Andrea didn't have her pants on anymore, and he tried to squint to see what she did have on, but his father's hand was blocking the view. Actually, his father's hand wasn't just blocking the view, it seemed to also be rubbing against the lower part of his nanny's stomach. Hunter figured she might have a tummy ache, especially since she kept moaning and groaning like she was in pain. He turned his attention to Andrea's face and concluded that she must indeed have a tummy ache and that his dad was helping her relieve it because her usually pretty face was contorted into something akin to agony. Her mouth hung open and her eyes were closed and she kept making these nasty little sounds that just sounded so pained. Hunter bit his lip, wanting to help, but shook his head and walked away. His father was in there helping Andrea anyway, so he shouldn't worry.
That night, while the Claringtons were having dinner, Hunter blurted out a question that unraveled his family in such a destructive way, they were never the same from then on. He asked his father if Andrea had a tummy ache because of all the food served during the party. When his mother asked him why, he explained and described to her what he saw his father and his nanny were doing in the guest room, but missed the storm of anger, hurt, and betrayal that clouded his mother's emerald eyes. Dana was able to keep her composure, though, and told her son in a very soft and gentle voice that betrayed the whirling emotions brewing behind her eyes to finish his dinner quickly so he can already go to bed. Hunter didn't realize that the reason why none of his parents followed him to his room to tuck him in was because they locked themselves in his father's study and had one of the most explosive fights in their family's history. The fight was so bad that it became the catalyst for the peaceful life that Hunter barely knew of.
By the time Hunter turned eight, no one noticed that he was becoming more and more withdrawn. The bright, emerald eyes had lost their previous luster, and his usually funny little quips had all but disappeared. No one who knew the Claringtons at a personal level could blame the young boy, though. Being witness to his parents' asinine comments towards each other over dinner and the relentless pursuit for ways to block out the sounds of his parents' shouts and breaking china was taking a toll on Hunter. Everyone saw it. Everyone but his parents.
When Hunter turned ten, he finally realized that back when he was six, what he witnessed on his birthday was actually his former nanny and his father having sex because they had an affair. This realization turned him into a quiet, sullen boy. The once friendly kid lost the cheerful lilt to his voice and merely answered in monosyllabic words. One would think that young Hunter was undergoing puberty quite early by the way he was acting, but everyone close to the Claringtons knew it was because of his father's constant infidelity and his mother's newfound pastime: alcohol. It was also during this year that Hunter had his first and most vicious anger episode which ended up with a handful of classmates getting badly beaten and bruised. The moment it happened, Bradley and Dana immediately brought their son to a child psychiatrist and it was discovered that Hunter suffers from Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
Hunter had to be medicated, although not heavily. His outbursts were mostly short and did not happen that often. He would mostly sulk or have a hissy fit, but there would be a few moments that Hunter would feel rage so inexplicable, he had to be locked in a bare room to avoid hurting anyone around him. Bradley turned the once spare guest room (not the one where Hunter caught him and the nanny going at it, God no! He would never subject his son to that again!) into a rage room that Hunter used every time he would have one of his episodes. Three sides of it was padded while one side was left bare. A long table was set up inside and it had different types of ceramic things on it that he could throw against the wall if he wanted to. Dana and Bradley gave Hunter clear instructions that if he so much as felt an eye twitch due to rage, he was to go to that room and not come out until it passes.
By the time Hunter was thirteen, he had turned into a bitter, mean-spirited bully, and his parents could not keep up with the façade anymore. Their fights were escalating, and Hunter showed no improvement in terms of his disorder. He actually seemed to be regressing. That was when Bradley and Dana decided to get a divorce. They wanted to get the divorce to spare Hunter from any further psychological, emotional, and mental harm. Unfortunately, they did not anticipate how messy the divorce was going to turn out to be, especially with the absence of a pre-nuptial agreement. That was when his parents decided to ship Hunter off to a military boarding school in Colorado Springs, CO for his sophomore year. That was when Hunter's love affair with boarding schools started.
Hunter was able to control his rage episodes better when he started military school. The rigid standards of the school helped with his control of everything within him and around him. He became calmer and more at peace with himself and actually thanked his parents for sending him to the academy for the remainder of his high school years.
Hunter requested to be emancipated from his parents when he turned sixteen. He finally admitted to himself that his parents were unwittingly destroying his life, even when they were already divorced. His mother spiraled into the pits of alcoholism and was now going in and out of rehab faster than you could blink while his father moved from woman to woman each month – sometimes even weeks. It was humiliating, to say the least, so he filed for emancipation. Luckily, the court sided with him. Fortunately for him, too, his parents felt so guilty for what they made him go through at such an early age that they signed over his trust fund and half of his inheritance (which included a good amount of stocks in their family businesses all over the United States) so he won't have to work while he finishes school. Hunter was slightly pleased, but he knew the pain and emptiness in his chest won't be filled by the money that his parents had no problems forking over.
Dalton discovered Hunter when he turned 17 and decided to offer him a full-ride scholarship in exchange for whipping the Warblers into shape. He moved from Colorado to Ohio, and that was where he met Sebastian Alexander Smythe – the boy who was his most serious competition for the title "Most Fucked-Up Teenager of All Time."
After the stupid steroids fiasco, Sebastian confronted Hunter in their dorm room and asked him what the hell was wrong with him, throttling the reporter like that on camera. Hunter remained sullenly quiet – a feat he had mastered at a very young age. Imagine Hunter's surprise when his back made contact painfully with their dorm room door and his shirt was fisted in front of him.
"Now that I have your fucking attention, would you mind telling me what that scene was all about? And why the fuck are you flying back to Colorado?" Sebastian yelled at him as he continued fisting the front of Hunter's uniform. Hunter shook himself lose and smoothed the front of his blazer, before grimacing and taking it off. He sat down on the bed with a plop, slumping forward a little, and motioned for his roommate to sit beside him.
That night, Hunter Clarington discovered a friend in Sebastian Smythe, and Sebastian finally found the man he would be proud to call his best friend. And that pain and emptiness in Hunter's chest? Hunter started to worry less and less over it.
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Author's Note 2: Reviews, follows, and favorites make my world one big happy bubble!
By the way, to all those wondering, the sequel to 'Happy Accident' is already on the planning stages. Hopefully, chapter one will be posted around the latter half of May.